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Quoting: CheesenessI'm not sure that holds much water when there are still significant numbers of Windows users (even in the Steam survey which is biased towards gaming oriented users) who're running 32 bit operating systems - maybe even more than there are 32 bit Linux users. It seems very much that there's something bigger at work than one distro's recommendation.

I was talking about Linux only. Sorry for not pointing that out.

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Quoting: minjThat's the thing, Canonical is in part to blame for the slow decline of 32bit.

I'm not sure that holds much water when there are still significant numbers of Windows users (even in the Steam survey which is biased towards gaming oriented users) who're running 32 bit operating systems - maybe even more than there are 32 bit Linux users. It seems very much that there's something bigger at work than one distro's recommendation.

Given that there aren't corporate machines constantly trying to get people to upgrade and buy new stuff, the level of 64 bit adoption on Linux has always seemed pretty impressive to me.

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Quoting: RadegastWhat I found interesting is that he joined the growing crowd of developers who see no future in OpenGL. I don't think new API would be beneficial to linux gaming at this time with SteamOS coming and more and more game developers announcing their linux support. They might decide to stick with DirectX and wait for the new thing to take hold on linux and OS X.

Not quite sure where you got that from. He does mention not to call OpenGL directly, but suggests the best way to do it is through SDL. And given his (and others) condemnation of the documentation, I can see why.

Why do you think he's anti-OpenGL?

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On my case steam still working on this wine version

View video on youtube.com

But character graphics errors still apeear on saint row the third

View video on youtube.com

and others stay working

View video on youtube.com

:)

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Quoting: Astro

Quoting: edddeduckferalTo put this into perspective one of our Linux testers has over 750+ hours of gameplay on XCOM Linux. To make sure a game is tested and is up to the quality that is deserves that takes quite a lot of time and effort. I am not saying 32 bit would need the same testing again but it wouldn't be minor given all the hardware configurations and features that need testing :)

You do your job from begining to the end or don't do it at all. Half-working port isn't what people waiting for.

We stated that the game had a minimum specification that required a 64 bit OS. The game works perfectly well on supported hardware and software. I understand from your many posts in this forum and others that you expected 32 bit support and are extremely upset that your 32 bit OS isn't supported but that doesn't mean the port has a problem. It just means 32 bit isn't supported.

Quoting: Astro

Quoting: edddeduckferalIt's not impossible but supporting 64 bit and 32 bit however it is a lot more work if you want to give full and official support to the 32bit platform. Given the comments and feedback so far only a very small number of users have 32 bit based OS's and are unwilling to update to 64bit to play.

I personaly saw a lot of surveys that says there're only 0.1% of linux users in the whole world. But you've ported XCOM anyway. And now you're talking about "a small number of users" because of surveys said so. No, that's not true. That's just what you want to believe in and beeing in that unpleasant and awkward situation you're tring to look like a reasonable man.

We have been reading every email and post in as many forums as possible to get feedback on the title, including from yourself we have had only a small number of people ask about 32 bit support so far compared to the large number of happy gamers on 64 bit.

I know you are of the opinion all software should be 32bit supported and our decision to openly support only 64 bit only with XCOM has upset you greatly. We have always tried to help you, we offered advice on how to request a refund when you missed the Ubuntu 64bit requirement on the Steam store page and we also have offered to answer any questions you might have on 32bit/64bit if you send us an email with them all in to help you understand why we developed a 64 bit version.

I don't want to turn this comments page into a debate on 32/64 bit OS, the last time I saw this happen on the Steam forums it got out of hand with people taking sides and nothing constructive is gained from it.

If you do have reasons and information about 32/64 bit or any other feedback please send it to us. We know you might not be happy with our decision on 64 bit but we are interested if you (or anyone else) have any thoughts and feedback about XCOM or our future porting decisions.

Edwin

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Quoting: wleoncio

Quoting: DrMcCoyAlso: I'm actually shocked that there's still so many people running full 32-bit installs. I had thought that pretty much died out around the time I got a 64-bit system...

Think about people like me, who back in 2010 wanted a stable Linux system, went to www.ubuntu.com, read "we recommend the 32-bit version", installed it and had just been updating that same machine since then.

That's the thing, Canonical is in part to blame for the slow decline of 32bit.

I started using Linux ~2007 and researched the architecture question right from the start (I am someone who always says no to 'recommended settings'). Even back then most people said 64bit is fine so I have been using it ever since without any major issues.

Come 2012, and ubuntu.com still showed 12.04LTS 32bit as recommended. LOL

By the way, surely there more games that are 64bit-only. I am not one to keep lists, but Planetary Annihilation is an easy example to point to.

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Quoting: edddeduckferalTo put this into perspective one of our Linux testers has over 750+ hours of gameplay on XCOM Linux. To make sure a game is tested and is up to the quality that is deserves that takes quite a lot of time and effort. I am not saying 32 bit would need the same testing again but it wouldn't be minor given all the hardware configurations and features that need testing :)

You do your job from begining to the end or don't do it at all. Half-working port isn't what people waiting for.

Quoting: edddeduckferalIt's not impossible but supporting 64 bit and 32 bit however it is a lot more work if you want to give full and official support to the 32bit platform. Given the comments and feedback so far only a very small number of users have 32 bit based OS's and are unwilling to update to 64bit to play.

I personaly saw a lot of surveys that says there're only 0.1% of linux users in the whole world. But you've ported XCOM anyway. And now you're talking about "a small number of users" because of surveys said so. No, that's not true. That's just what you want to believe in and beeing in that unpleasant and awkward situation you're tring to look like a reasonable man.

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Coolio, I was just refitting my machine for a triple boot (Win 7, Ubuntu 14.04 and SteamOS). Now to reinstall SteamOS and see if that works out well or not (it definitely works in dual boot). Glad they finally included the new AMD drivers, I hope it works out alright for me. I fear the day my 5750 is dropped from official Linux support is soon...

EDIT: Triple booting works!
http://i.imgur.com/AwUit0P.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/0mGHyev.jpg

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Quoting: GuestI have 3 games whose developers thought it was a good idea to save their files in “Documents”

Ugh, yes.
Kentucky Route Zero and Crusader Kings II do that. Redshirts puts its save into ~/Documents/Saved\ Games/Redshirts, while Breach & Clear puts its into ~/Documents/SavedGames/BreachClear.

This is utter madness. What is this, Windows where the prefered save file location changes every year?

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Meh.

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Quoting: oldrocker99Downloaded it after it appeared in my library, enabled the Linux beta and it runs just fine!

Thanks for that, was wondering why I kept getting missing executable :S. haha.

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Quoting: NyamiouInSomnia RPG
The Deer God

insomnia looks like its borrowing almost the entire design of fallout 1/2, paired with some new gameplay. beeing a big fan of the earlier fallout games im ok with that tho and looking forward to this a lot. question is how the shoulder perspective gameplay will work out in the end, having my doubts there.

deer god looks very atmospheric. not really like a game that will bring long term motivation or advanced gameplay but a nice little novelle with style.

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What I found interesting is that he joined the growing crowd of developers who see no future in OpenGL. I don't think new API would be beneficial to linux gaming at this time with SteamOS coming and more and more game developers announcing their linux support. They might decide to stick with DirectX and wait for the new thing to take hold on linux and OS X.

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Gorky 17
http://store.steampowered.com/app/253920/
Rune
http://store.steampowered.com/app/210950/
Sacred
http://store.steampowered.com/app/12320/
Majesty
http://store.steampowered.com/app/25990/
Knight And Merchants
http://store.steampowered.com/app/253900/

and the rest of the Loki and LGP back catalog that should be brought over.

Then theres
QuantZ
http://store.steampowered.com/app/37800/
Achron
http://store.steampowered.com/app/109700/
Eschalon
http://store.steampowered.com/app/25600/
Railroad Tycoon 2
http://store.steampowered.com/app/7620/
Jagged Alliance 2
http://store.steampowered.com/app/1620/
Robin Hood
http://store.steampowered.com/app/46560/
Ankh 2
http://store.steampowered.com/app/12440/
Kingpin: Life Of Crime
http://store.steampowered.com/app/38430/

And tons of others:
Most notably stuff like Neverwinter Nights, Prey, Quake and Doom.

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I enjoyed hearing this speech live! Southeast Linux Fest was another success. :D

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Quoting: GuestEdit: thanks for NOT creating a “.feral-interactive” directory in $HOME! :D

Or even worse when companies don't hide the folder at all, and when they throw random config files and logs into your home folder.

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Was just about to comment, Kels. :)

And yes, Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme... Fetishization of trans* people... Bad.

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This is good news. I bought tidalis in a bundle once, never played it. Can't blame them for not porting that one but everything else means this is great news.

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Please delete, I made a mistake on this comment.

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The problem with Voidspace is that it will heavily favor those with allot of excess computational power at their disposal, the guy using his company's desktops to crunch coins every night is going to have tons of surplus coins to throw around, while Joe Regular that jumps into the game on his laptop is going to be SOL as crunching coins will turn his laptop into a puddle.

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Quoting: titiI sadly had to stop spending money on kickstarter and other crowdfunding projects because too many of them did not show a (promised) linux version.
But even when its released I often try to save money :-/. Rust for example was a lot cheaper on ebay for me ....

In general ist easy for me to not buy before a linux version is released. Simply because I have no Windows. Wine might be a option sometimes, but you never know if things really work and how long they will work, so I stopped using this too.

Yeah, I figure I can always hold out till the next big sale, when I'll be able to get it for somewhere around 66-90% off and be able to pick up a few titles purely off of selling the cards as I don't really care much about badges.

Always remember to check the Steam storefront page every 8 hours to vote, you'll get cards every 3rd vote, but also you'll be able to get Linux games on better deals if they get picked for the next block of sales.

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Man, Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme goes out of its way to be some offensive trash, doesn't it? I guess deviantART members need games too. That one's on my "Not If You Freakin' Paid Me" list.


These ones look like they have potential though:

• Planetship
  
• InSomnia RPG
  
• Saga Heroes
  
• Spheritis
  
• The Deer God
  
• The Masterplan (the music alone makes it worth watching)

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Quoting: Gran PC

Quoting: jdubSome devs need to realize steam forums are the worst...every steam community is balls. Taking what trolls say (and there will ALWAYS be trolls) personally is really not professional...announcing it on the forums is just setting yourself up for this.

Alright then, I guess I'll have to start ignoring my email, the forums and all other channels through which the community can give me feedback.

(I don't disagree with you that the Steam forums are pretty bad in general though)

It's a well known fact of the internet:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

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Having actually listened to it the most striking thing to me was some of his more "diplomatic" phrasings about certain things, such as Humble Bundle getting more lax on what games they included, and other disappointments which at this point are thankfully mostly muddled out by the optimism.

He also gave namechecks to a lot of good things, and about the only thing that made me grit my teeth was that in his response to the free driver question at the end he mentioned the attempts to reverse engineer Nvidia hardware and the fact that Intel pays people to work on their free drivers, but made no mention of AMD, despite the fact they do the same thing. I know it is not his job to correct people's bullshit, but given the amount of FUD going around about that, I would have appreciated just that tiny extra bit of clarification.

This is not the first SELF talk he has given by the way, and I recommend people going back and taking a look at them all just to see just how much progress has been made over the past few years. There is always one bit of the earlier history he always gets wrong, but I will hopefully be able to expound upon that at a later date.

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Still no Tallowmere? What a shame. Feel free to give that game some support if you're into it. I think it's turning out to be quite fun.

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Quoting: GuestThanks for the extensive answer, Edwin. I wasn’t thinking that you’d need to test the 32 bit version thoroughly, but I suppose there could be some differences, yes… (Slower VP8 decoding perhaps?) Or even compiler bugs.

Happy to explain :) The 32 bit and 64 bit versions of drivers libraries etc are very very similar but often just one small change can cause a cascade that ends up in a game bug. To be sure that everything is OK and for us to be happy to say "Feral support this setup" we need to be sure and that take time and effort. We want to give Linux users that great experience out the box and to do that you need to pay attention to detail and test and test and test to make sure you have done all you can.

No game is perfect but you should always aim to be as close as possible :)

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Quoting: GuestWhile I don’t mind personally, I find it strange that they didn’t build the game for 32 bit too. It should be very easy (I suppose the game already works on Windows 32 bit so there shouldn’t be any technical problem) and they are losing one third of Steam Linux users.

The fact the game compiles in 32bit on Windows doesn't mean it you get a releasable product on 32bit Linux straight away. Compiling a build is just one stage of the process of supporting a different hardware platform. You need to test the title extensively to make sure no 32 bit specific issues exist, you need to deal with dependencies and test 32 bit versions of libraries & drivers which could have different bugs and performance to the 64 bit versions this all takes up time on top of the "select 32bit and compile" stage everyone thinks about. :)

To put this into perspective one of our Linux testers has over 750+ hours of gameplay on XCOM Linux. To make sure a game is tested and is up to the quality that is deserves that takes quite a lot of time and effort. I am not saying 32 bit would need the same testing again but it wouldn't be minor given all the hardware configurations and features that need testing :)

It's not impossible but supporting 64 bit and 32 bit however it is a lot more work if you want to give full and official support to the 32bit platform. Given the comments and feedback so far only a very small number of users have 32 bit based OS's and are unwilling to update to 64bit to play.

Never say never but I think 32bit of XCOM is unlikely but this does have a big upside, it means we can spend all that development and testing time we would have spend on 32 bit on other Linux games and future updates of XCOM. :)

Quoting: GuestContrary to what the interview says, this is the first time I’ve seen a 64 bit-only game. On the contrary there are many 32 bit-only games.

It might not be true yet on Linux (likely due to the less complex nature of many of the games released so far) but on the PC and console 64 bit is becoming more and more the default with 32 bit starting to be dropped.

The jump over hasn't gotten massive yet but with the next gen console games coming out in the coming year for PC I think 64 bit will become more and more the standard for future gaming.

Quoting: GuestEdit: thanks for NOT creating a “.feral-interactive” directory in $HOME! :D

Glad you noticed, we try and do everything the right way following standard Linux conventions. If you have any feedback where we could do anything better let us know.

Edwin
Feral Interactive

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There are the game you should absolutely have a look :
VoidSpace - The Dogecoin MMORPG
InSomnia RPG
Futuridium EP
Pale Blue
Black Ice
The Deer God
Gender Bender DNA Twister Extreme
The Masterplan
Tormentum - Dark Sorrow

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Listened to the whole thing this lunch time, then missed out posting it first on Reddit by an hour. I was the 92 viewer at the time. Fame! Er...

He's a decent talker. Great history.

I still wish he'd fix Sanctum 2 though! :D

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I did some research about the history of Linux gaming some time ago and played a bit of xbill along with other games to get some background footage.

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